Mikko Jäkälä awarded with the Language Campus Award

On Wednesday, April 15, Mikko Jäkälä received the Language Campus Award in recognition of his active and tireless work in support of the Language Campus and the development of its activities. Involved in Language Campus activities from the very beginning, Mikko Jäkälä has conceived and implemented activities, materials, and events that have made Language Campus well-known both in the field of education and more widely among the general public.

The award was presented jointly by Marko Siitonen, Ulla Lautiainen, and Petteri Laihonen, the heads of Department of Language and Communication Studies, the Centre for Multilingual academic communication, and the Centre for Applied Language Studies, respectively. While presenting the award, they also gave reasons for choosing the winner.

This year, once again, we asked for nominations, and received several excellent suggestions. However, one candidate, nominated by multiple people, stood out this time.

For as long as I can remember, [Mikko] has been “Mr. Language Campus". There’s plenty of material in the Language Campus history, and Mikko appears in the photos six times - that is, in every third one. […] I can only guess at the number of Language Campus events Mikko has hosted!

While discussing the recipient of the Language Campus Award, we all wondered why Mikko hadn’t received the Language Campus Certificate of Honor sooner - let’s fix that right now!

The Language Campus Award is presented annually to an individual who has promoted the status of languages and communication at the university level or significantly developed the activities of Language Campus. Previous recipients of the award are listed in the Language Campus history.

The award is traditionally presented at the Language Campus Seminar. The theme of this year’s seminar was the changing nature of teaching. You can read more about the seminar in this blog post.

Language Campus is a joint effort between the Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication (Movi), the Department of Language and Communication Studies (KiVi), the Centre for Applied Language Studies (Solki), the language pedagogy section at the Department of Teacher Education (OKL), the Teacher training school (Norssi), and the Finnish Institute for Educational Research (KTL) at the University of Jyväskylä. The Language Campus brings together a nationally and internationally unique group of experts who work together to develop and reform language and language use research, language teaching, language education and language education policy.